Walking to School

We live on a block where there are no sidewalks and cars speed down our street at 40 miles per hour.

The sidewalk issue has been a contentious one here in Princeton. For us, having no sidewalks means it’s nearly impossible for us to let our 10-year-old walk to school by himself without putting his life at risk.

This is what we tell ourselves anyway. We walk him to school every day and one of us picks him up after school every day. It’s a time when we get to talk to him about his day and we get to walk off some of our midlife bulge.

But my seventh grader doesn't let us walk him to school anymore. He made it clear from the start of middle school that he wanted nothing to do with us accompanying him to school. He zips off with his friends on his bike and leaves us in the dust.

He's forced to tolerate us when we drive him to school during bad weather and bitter cold. But only until the spring when he’s off again.

I was interested to see the New York Times story on Sunday, “Why Can’t She Walk To School,” that details the dilemma parents face of when to let their kids walk to school by themselves. Some parents have gotten grief from other parents, school administrators and even police for letting their kids go solo.

It made me think about the fact that there are just a handful of kids at my son’s grammar school who walk by themselves. One friend let her children walk home by themselves but only if they had a cell phone that allowed her to track their whereabouts.

I feel slightly embarrassed to be among the legion of parents who accompany their kids everywhere, even to and from school. My parents never dreamed of walking us to school and they drove us only when it was serious rain or snow. No light sprinkle would do.

I want to say that we walked to school without ever having any problems. But now that I think about it, there was that guy who offered us candy to get in his car. We refused and when we came home and told my mom about it, she was understandably upset.

But hey that was in the dark ages. It didn’t occur to my mom to call the police. There were no bulletins that went out warning parents about the man. My mother told us to be careful and tell her if he bothered us again and that was the end of it.

I don’t want to bring back those days. I don't think a little caution is such a bad thing. But at the same time I want kids to have some independence.

For us, the walk to school is more about family time than protection. And it’s more about those speeding cars than it is about child predators. For us, walking to school with our child is all about savoring this last year of grammar school before our youngest child joins his brother and takes off on his own.

There comes a point when even if we insist on holding our kids hands, they let go. That’s when we have to stop our clinging and allow them to walk off without us.

Photo from blog.mlive.com

Even Babies Discriminate Link

The link to the Newsweek Story "Even Babies Discriminate" was wrong in my last posting. Here's the link: http//www.newsweek.com/id/214989/page/2

Do Babies & Kids See Race?

Do babies discriminate between different races? Researchers say they do and that babies are more attracted to the faces of people who look similar to their own family.

While babies and children discriminate between the races more than we might think, parents are still acting as if race doesn't exist or as Steven Colbert says, "I don't see race." I can understand why parents might feel they have to tiptoe around the issue but that's not helping our kids figure out anything.

When Mom and Dad don't teach their kids what they really do think, the kids fill in the blanks themselves, researchers say. The survey of white children aged 5 to 7 showed that children of parents who were not prejudiced themselves said that "almost none" of white people were mean but that "some" or "a lot" of black people were mean, according to an article entitled "Even Babies Discriminate" in the Sept. 5 issue of Newsweek.

Just telling kids "everyone is the same," isn't enough, explains Researcher Briggitte Vittrup, of Texas Woman's University, in an interviewer on NPR's "Tell Me More" today. Parents need to go further and tell children that although people may look different and live in different places, they may be very similar and may like the same toys or the same TV shows.

With no guidance from parents, children pick up on negative messages on television and in society itself, Vittrup says.

When researchers questioned children about their parents' attitudes, 14 percent said their parents didn't like black people and 38 percent said, "I don't know," even when parents weren't prejudiced, according to Newsweek.

In fact, when researcher Briggite Vittrup of Texas Woman's University, asked parents to talk to their children about race, many white parents dropped out of the study because they were so uncomfortable. Black parents are three times more likely to talk about race to their children probably because they feel they should prepare their children for what their race might mean in today's society.

So it all comes down once again to talking to your kids and we can't wiggle out of it. If we want our kids to learn good values about race and a whole host of other topics, it has to start at home.


Photo from doctor2008.wordpress.com